Interactivity

Alongside our Typography assignment we have also been given the project of ‘interactivity’. First off, i decided to look at what exactly ‘interactivity’ is.

In computers, interactivity is the dialog that occurs between a human being (or possibly another live creature) and a computer program. (Programs that run without immediate user involvement are not interactive; they’re usually called batch or background programs.) Games are usually thought of as fostering a great amount of interactivity. However, order entry applications and many other business applications are also interactive, but in a more constrained way (offering fewer options for user interaction).

On the World Wide Web, you not only interact with the browser (the Web application program) but also with the pages that the browser brings to you. The implicit invitations called hypertext that link you to other pages provide the most common form of interactivity when using the Web (which can be thought of as a giant, interconnected application progam).

In addition to hypertext, the Web (and many non-Web applications in any computer system) offer other possibilities for interactivity. Any kind of user input, including typing commands or clicking the mouse, is a form of input. Displayed images and text, printouts, motion video sequences, and sounds are output forms of interactivity.

The earliest form of interaction with computers was indirect and consisted of submitting commands on punched cards and letting the computer read them and perform the commands. Later computer systems were designed so that average people (not just programmers) could interact immediately with computers, telling them what programs to run and then interacting with those programs, such as word processors (then called “editors”), drawing programs, and other interactive programs. The first interactive human-computer interfaces tended to be input text sequences called “commands” (as in “DOS commands”) and terse one-line responses from the system.

In the late 1970’s, the first graphical user interfaces (GUIs) emerged from the Xerox PARC Lab, found their way into the Apple Macintosh personal computer, and then into Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and thus into almost all personal computers available today.

 

After researching this, i then decided to focus on researching Interactivity in Design. Which i quickly came to realise we use in everyday life all of the time. We interact with things like

• phones
• tablets
• ATM
• Television
• Game Consoles
• Computers
• Microwaves
• Radios
• Cars

Almost everything in our lives has some form and design interactivity. I found the piece of information below on Wikipedia and found it quite useful.

In some cases Interactive Design is equated to Interaction Design, however in the specialized study of Interactive Design there are defined differences. To assist in this distinction, Interaction Design can be thought of as:

• Making devices usable, useful, and fun, focusing on the efficiency and intuitive hardware^[3]
• A fusion of product design, computer science, and communication design ^[3]
• A process of solving specific problems under a specific set of contextual circumstances^[3]
• The creation of form for the behavior of products, services, environments, and systems^[4]
• Making dialogue between technology and user invisible, i.e. reducing the limitations of communication through and with technology.^[5]
• About connecting people through various products and services^[6]

Whereas Interactive Design can be thought of as:

• Giving purpose to Interaction Design through meaningful experiences ^[7]
• Consisting of six main components including User control, Responsiveness, Real-Time Interactions, Connectedness, Personalization, and Playfulness ^[8]
• Focuses on the use and experience of the software ^[9]
• Retrieving and processing information through on-demand responsiveness ^[10]
• Acting upon information to transform it ^[11]
• The constant changing of information and media, regardless of changes in the device ^[12]
• Providing interactivity through a focus on the capabilities and constraints of human cognitive processing ^[13]

While both definitions indicate a strong focus on the user, the difference arises from the purposes of Interactive Design and Interaction Design. In essence Interactive Design involves the creation of meaningful uses of hardware and systems and that Interaction Designis the design of those hardware and systems. Interaction Design without Interactive Design provides only hardware or an interface. Interactive Design without Interaction Design cannot exist for there is no platform for it to be used by the user.

 

Our task is to make our Jellyfish world interactive, we only got this project a few hours ago and already we have some interesting ideas floating about such as,

• an interactive board game (getting the eco-warriors out of the jellyfish and escaping)
• Animating a character and having a conversation with it.
• Bringing the characters into an online game
• Creating a facebook Page

and many more ideas still to come.

Typography

Typography (from the Greek words τύπος (typos) = form and γραφή (graphe) = writing) is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). Type Design is a closely related craft, which some consider distinct and others a part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. In modern times, typography has been put into motion—in film, television and online broadcasts—to add emotion to mass communication. 

Typography is performed by typesetters,  compositors, typographers, graphic designers,  art directors, comic book artists, graffiti artists, clerical workers, and anyone else who arranges type for a product. Until the Digital age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users, and David Jury states that “typography is now something everybody does.”

 

Here are some good websites i have found to help myself understand photography.

http://omniglot.com/

http://www.creativebloq.com/

http://thethesymbol.com/

http://ilovetypography.com/

http://typecooker.com/

Here are some nice pieces of typography i have found.

 

i cant wait for our group to work on our own typography and see what we create.

Link

 

 

After a week of retrying, reediting and redoing we improved and changed our animatic dramatically.

Making an Animatic.

We decided that rather than focusing on the fact its a jellyfish world we decided to focus on humans within the jellyfish who were experimented on and turned into animals. We decided to use the group aka me, Tyrone, Aidhan, Charlie and Hannah as the main characters. I am an octopus, Tyrone is a werebear, Aidhan is a bull, Charlie is a cat and Hannah is a possum/Squirrel. As you can see below.

 

 

We decided to storyboard the idea of post it notes and stick them up and change them around until we got the desired shots and got the story making sense.We are looked at as super hero style characters. We escape from our tubes were we have been put into a coma and turn into out animal selves, we have a childs tv show style title sequence. We originally want to break the problem and become human but realise we like the powers we get along with being these animal creatures. As you can see below.

 

i decided to focus on the scene of us breaking out of our tubes and as you can see below i put it in a little video, sadly as i only have a trial of the software, there is a watermark over the film.

I am looking forward to seeing the finished product with all of our work included.

 

Jellyfish World

For our Animatic/Storyboard for our Jellyfish world we really need to get a good, strong, solid story. We liked the idea of this jellyfish world being something of a collector and were inspired by the saga of rex animated short films.

We see our jellyfish as a bit of a Noahs Ark type character, collecting two of each animal, or human, or flower. Seeing the little fox from The Saga of Rex really pushes me towards the jellyfish being an animal collector. I like the idea of the animals being extremely cute and fluffy, with blank expressions as they get abducted, rather than expressing panic and fear. I look forward to designing these cute animal characters.

Making An Animatic

For our new Creative Elements project, we have put into new groups, in a new world and have 2 weeks to create a animatic. I am now in a group with Hannah L, Aidan, Charlie and Tyrone. Our new world is within a jellyfish. People live in different tiers of this jellyfish, i feel its very inspired by Terry Pratchett’s discworld.

 

As you can see here from the previous groups work there are many tiers and classes of people/things living within this jellyfish world. Everyone in our group felt like we had worked enough in groups that were based under water and i we were determined to get this jellyfish out of the sea! We realized that jellyfish don’t move by pushing from the water like we do, they release a gas that elevates them around the ocean and we thought, why not have this gas elevate them anywhere, and so we decided this jellyfish could float around earth, space, solar systems, whatever we want! This idea was heavily inspired by discworld.

So the question we have been addressed with is, what is an animatic?

Well, to put it bluntly, an animatic is a series of storyboarded images put together in a film with a soundtrack to tell the story. Up until just a few years ago, animatics were produced by filming or videotaping storyboards.

Over the last ten years, animatic production has become much more sophisiticated. Animatics are now produced with the aid of computer animation (2D or 3D), with special visual effects once reserved for high-end Hollywood productions.

here is a video example of a good animtic. It is the animatic for the music video to the song Dirty Harry by The Gorrliaz

Here is an outstanding animatic, i would actually call it an animation within itself. It blows my mind the talent and time put into these blockbuster films.

If our animatic is even one tenth as good as this, i will be a happy bunny 🙂

Digital Paintings of Metal World.

This week we were put into new groups and new worlds. We were put into a metal world with a hero as the main character. This character is the only person on this world who has a human heart and brain. He is alone in the world but helps all other life forms anyway. Due to their being two suns and moons metal and gravitational force is drastically change. I decided to capture the idea of a metal city scape showing the idea of other planets or suns and moons close to the earth. One painting shows the lonely hero standing observing the world.

Metal World Sketchbook Work

 

 

With these sketches i was working with a number of things, perspective, cinematography, colour and tone. We were building upon the idea of a metal world that the groups before us had created. What they hadn’t established was were this place was and so i was trying to get a grasp of were this world is. As this world has a hero we wanted to bring a back story to him and so we came up with the idea that the reason he wasn’t fully turned into a robot was because he had dived into a lava pit, and when i emerged the disaster had already struck and so there he was, a metal man with a remaining human heart and brain. Taking this on board i began creating some images.

With this one i decided to put this world/city on top of a platform above pools of molten lava. 

In this one i wanted to bring in some colour and so did a warm, orangey wash of water colour to express how the lava and dust from it might effect the air giving it a warm glow constantly. I then quickly sketched in some harsh looking city buildings with a sharpie marker.

 

 

I forgot to mention, the reason this world is metal and magnetic is due to their being multiple suns and moons changing the gravitational pull and orbit etc. In this image i just wanted to visualise the other suns/moons/planet so stuck to a simple pencil sketch. Again, rivers of lava are present.

In the previous images, all the buildings are harsh looking and so i decided to try and give metal a softness. I used a few blue copic markers to create this design. I felt that blue wasn’t as harsh as black and it worked well with blending the shapes and shine that reflect from the buildings. 

In this image i took the harsh, sharpness of the metal to an extreme and gave every building sharp pointing edges. I took inspiration from some of the buildings in Dubai whilst i was researching. 

Cinematography

Yesterday Conann was discussing Cinematography and showing us some beautiful examples of good cinematography for us to carry through into our paintings in our ‘New World’ projects for Creative Elements. One particular cinematographer who i thought was great was Roger Deakins. He did the cinemaotgraphy for The Secret Garden, The Shawshank Redemption, Wall-e, How to Train Your Dragon, Skyfall and many more amazing films. However, Conann showed us some of his work from True Grit (2010),  and i was amazed, the shots he captured were beyond beautiful. 

The light beaming through these windows in the dusty room is just beautiful.  Capturing the golden, warm colours really sets the mood. 

When seeing a landscape image like this, i truly understand the need for widescreen film. 

Another film by him i adore is Skyfall. I remember watching it in the cinema and just thinking, wow, this is incredible. 

the opening credits were entertaining, beautiful and had me glued to the screen.

Again Deakins uses strong light beaming through windows to create a strong silhouetted figure.

Only someone with great talent can strategically create an image in darkness and highlight in such a skillful way. It truly is inspiring. 

After becoming so inspired i decided to go to the library and took out the book ‘Cinematography Theory and Practice, Image Making for Cinematographers and Directors’ by Blain Brown. 

Already from only reading the first few pages, its a great help and opening my mind to new possibilities. It is making me think of the image im creating completely differently. When i make my film/painting etc i need to take into account…

• The Frame
• Light and Colour
• The Lens
• Movement
• Texture
• Establishing
• POV

Splitting things into the rule of thirds helps me visualize what i’m trying to create much better. Something people seem to overlook is in thinking that this is only important in photography, or only important in live action, as you can see here, it is always important. 

 

The main thing i feel i need to focus on is light and colour, what makes an image go pop? What leads you into the image? IS there only one basic colour from dark to light? Is it an array of colour? Where is the light coming from? and why?

This is something i feel i personally need to research to become better at not just film making but painting and photography. 

Something i hadnt even picked up on until a few years ago was filters in film, or one colour scheme throughout, i find it it be beautiful and is something i want to focus on now, take Pans Labyrinth for example, the entire film has a cold blue/grey or golden filter.

And take Honeydripper for example, it takes its name literally bringing warm honey shades into the film throughout. 

Other films focus only on one colour for a specific effect, a very basic idea of this comes to mind from Schindlers List. This film is done fully in black and white until we see a lone child in a scene of war disaster, this childs coats red colour is kept fully saturated in the film. It represents so much more than just highlighted an innocent child, the red represents the fear, anger, blood, love and loss of war. 

We later see a body in a red coat along with the other dead bodies in a cart being took to the incinerator, the first time i saw this film i cried my eyes out when i realized this revelation. This really does show how use of colour can be used for more than just an aesthetically pleasing image. 

I am looking forward to reading the rest of my book and hope to learn and work well from what i am learning.

 

 

 

 

Adding Colour to Character Design.

I originally designed characters in pencil on a sketchbook or in tonal using SketchbookPro. Here are two i have quickly changed with colour. I plan to detailed paintings using the colours chosen.